Arctic Circle -- Ancient Vacation Hotspot?

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Scientists have found what might have been the
ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit average
temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It's smack in the
middle of the Arctic.

First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the
Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the
North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new
studies show.

The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a
much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse
gases that came about naturally.

Skeptics of man-made causes of global warming have nothing to
rejoice over, however. The researchers say their studies appearing
in Thursday's issue of Nature also offer a peak at just how bad
conditions can get.

"It probably was (a tropical paradise) but the mosquitoes were
probably the size of your head," said Yale geology professor Mark
Pagani, a study co-author.

And what a watery, swampy world it must have been.

"Imagine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and
cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean," said
Pagani, a member of the multinational Arctic Coring Expedition that
conducted the research.

Millions of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period
of natural global warming. But around 55 million years ago there
was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated
the greenhouse effect.

Scientists already knew this "thermal event" happened but are
not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from
the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic
eruptions.

Many experts figured that while the rest of the world got really
hot, the polar regions were still comfortably cooler, maybe about
52 degrees Fahrenheit.

But the new research found the polar average was closer to 74
degrees. So instead of Boston-like weather year-round, the Arctic
was more like Miami North. Way north.

"It's the first time we've looked at the Arctic, and man, it
was a big surprise to us," said study co-author Kathryn Moran, an
oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island. "It's a new look
to how the Earth can respond to these peaks in carbon dioxide."

It's enough to make Santa Claus break into a sweat.

The 74-degree temperature, based on core samples which act as a
climatic time capsule, was probably the year-round average, but
because data is so limited it might also be just the summertime
average, researchers said.

What's troubling is that this hints that future projections for
warming, several degrees over the next century, may be on the low
end, said study lead author Appy Sluijs of the Institute of
Environmental Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Also it shows that what happened 55 million years ago was proof
that too much carbon dioxide - more than four times current levels
- can cause global warming, said another co-author Henk Brinkhuis
at Utrecht University.

Purdue University atmospheric sciences professor Gabriel Bowen,
who was not part of the team, praised the work and said it showed
that "there are tipping points in our (climate) system that can
throw us to these conditions."

And the new research also gave scientists the idea that a simple
fern may have helped pull Earth from a hothouse to an icehouse by
sucking up massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, this
natural solution to global warming was not exactly quick: It took
about a million years.

With all that heat and massive freshwater lakes forming in the
Arctic, a fern called Azolla started growing and growing. Azolla,
still found in warm regions today, grew so deep, so wide that
eventually it started sucking up carbon dioxide, Brinkhuis
theorized. And that helped put the cool back in the Arctic.

Bowen said he has a hard time accepting that part of the
research, but Brinkhuis said the studies show tons upon tons of
thick mats of Azolla covered the Arctic and moved south.

"This could actually contribute to push the world to a cooling
mode," Brinkhuis said, but only after it got hotter first and then
it would take at least 800,000 years to cool back down. It's not
something to look forward to, he said.

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